Cathal Breslin's 'Mirages' is, in his own words, a 'reflection of light and colour.' Yet, part of a modest estimate of his programme, it hardly captures his far-reaching and masterly journey. In Rachmaninov's 'Variations on a theme of Corelli'(for Vladimir Ashkenazy among the composer's darkest works) his playing is powerful and eloquent. His way with Corelli's theme is aptly measured and dignified and whether in stillness or virtuoso elaboration—a reminder of Rachmaninov's unique stature as a pianist-- his sense of voicing, balance and texture is formidable. Drama and scale are grandly to the fore yet never at the expense of allowing the music time to breathe and speak; notably in the tear-stained and disconsolate coda.
And yet it is in Chopin's Polonaise-Fantasie, that audacious masterpiece, that he achieves his greatest, most remarkable success. Remarkable because the Polonaise-Fantasie with its opening still startling harmonic progression, heroic climax and a moment when a trill expands seemingly endlessly and enrichingly, is widely played and recorded. The Polonaise-Fantasie has been a lifelong part of the repertoires of Cortot, Rubinstein, Horowitz and Arrau, to name but a few. Even so Breslin's playing achieves a knife edge between creator and re-creator, between precision and a sense of wonder. Here is a reminder of how the Polonaise Fantasie was incomprehensible to Chopin's contemporaries(for Frederick Nieks, among the earliest Chopin scholars) it 'stood outside the realm of art.'
Then there is de Falla's 'Fantasia Baetica,' an abrupt change of colour and nationality. Here is an acerbic evocation of the old southern Spain, of Andalucia where force and originality are at the opposite pole to, say, Albeniz's 'Iberia' or the 'Goyescas' of Granados. Both the 'Fantasia Baetica' and Villa 'Lobos's 'Rudepoema' were dedicated to Artur Rubinstein who gave the premieres of both works before abandoning them in favour of more readily accessible, audience friendly music. From Breslin, whatever the demands, you hear all the notes, never a vague approximation which reminds me that I once attended a master-class by the American pianist Anthony di Bonaventura. Listening to a rhythmically insecure performance of the Fantasia Baetica he said, 'imagine if you were a body without a skeleton, you'd just be a blob, wouldn't you.' Rhythm, even above vivid colouration, is at the heart of the Fantasia, and the point, mischievously made, struck home.
Breslin ends with Brahms opus 118 Fantasies and Intermezzi. He rides the storms of the opening to magnificent full-blooded effect and his expressive beauty in the Intermezzo No 1, that most confiding of lullabies, is memorable but never at the expense of line and continuity. Again, that formidable command allows him the fullest response to the Ballade, to its 'allego energico' direction and in the final Intermezzo in E flat minor, an epic in miniature if ever there was one, he captures all of the composer's desolation that not even the central heroics can erase. In his hands the concluding rise from pianissimo to fortissimo comes like a final cry of despair.
This is a record of rare musical quality. A master of a treasure trove of idioms and styles Cathal Breslin is above all born for Chopin.
Bryce Morrison